Co-sleeping

A BBC article Bed sharing 'risks babies lives warns against co-sleeping with your baby. Here's a quote from the article:

"We need to make all parents aware that the most comfortable place for them to sleep is the most dangerous place for their baby."

I think the true purpose of this article is to scare the reader.

The article does not back up this claim. The article does not provide evidence that sudden infant death occurs more often when co-sleeping than when not co-sleeping. The evidence simply shows that smoking, drinking, and premature birth are all risk factors for SIDS, regardless of whether co-sleeping is practiced. To conclude from this evidence that co-sleeping is a risk factor would be like concluding that driving is dangerous simply because drunk driving is dangerous. No, driving is dangerous because you are more likely to die while driving than while not.

The article cites a statistic that out of 50 cases of infant death, "31 were found to have been sharing a bed or sofa with a parent". So, 62% of deaths occurred while the parents were sharing a bed or sofa with their baby. This statistic is useless unless compared to the percentage of parents that regularly share a bed with their baby. If 80% of couples co-sleep with their baby, but only 62% of sudden infant deaths occurred while co-sleeping, then what would you conclude?

There is in fact evidence that co-sleeping decreases the risk of SIDS. Erinne found this article, which dives into the statistics in much greater detail and shows that co-sleeping is less than half as risky as sleeping in a crib.

Obama Proposes High-Speed Rail System For the US

I stumbled on this Slashdot article a few minutes ago.

We do not own a car and we take a lot of public transportation, so we very enthusiastically support this idea.

meat

I was on the way back from a business trip the other day, and wanted to get some dinner at the airport. Sometimes I get a craving for a hamburger, and since Erinne and I never eat beef at home, I took the opportunity to get some while I could.

I need to learn from my mistakes. Out of the handful of times that I have had hamburger over the last couple of years, a majority of those times have resulted in me having an upset stomach. Steak and other beef seem to be ok, but hamburger is usually a problem.

So, those two Whoppper Juniors exited from my body even more violently than when I scarfed them down earlier that day.

hiccups

At this stage, the baby's central nervous is developed enough that she starts hiccuping in the womb. When it happens, it is very rhythmic.

Baby kicking videos

See our baby kicking here and here.

Baby belly

See Erinne's belly grow big here

Lifestyle

There are a number of things that Erinne and I do that define our lifestyle, particularly in the way of consumption. According to Wikipedia, lifestyle also includes social relations, entertainment, and dress, but I have only noticed interesting patterns in our consumption habits, so that's what I will talk about below.

I suppose many people have an overall philosophy that dictates their consumption habits. On the other hand, I've noticed that our consumption habits seem to follow a pattern of healthiness, naturalness, sustainability, and thriftiness, and that our philosphy can be derived from that.

Here are just a few of the things that we do:

• We do not own a car. This saves us money, makes sense in the dense neighborhoods that we prefer to live in, and keeps us healthy by forcing us to walk everywhere. We often take public transportation, and we sometimes rent a car by the hour.
• We do not eat a lot of meat, (especially Erinne). We prefer to get our protein from healthier sources.
• We try not to waste. I don't like to throw things away. It's more about being thrifty than it is about being environmentally friendly, although both are somewhat important to us.
  
• We will use cloth diapers for our baby. This is a combination of thriftiness and environmentalism.
  
• We use a lot of natural cleaning and personal care products. This can be very convenient because you can replace almost all such products with just a few: castile soap (e.g. Dr. Bronner's), baking soda, and vinegar. We use Dr. Bronner's for cleaning dishes, the kitchen, the bathroom, etc. We use baking soda for shampoo and apple cider vinegar for conditioner. Conventional shampoo is bad for your hair!!
  
• We do not use toilet paper or tissues. I'll keep the details to myself.
• We don't like to spend money. We like to go to the mall just to look at things without buying.
• We're willing to pay more for local and organic food.
  

Stupid Google

A few days ago I created a virtual portfolio on Google Finance, and I gave myself $100,000 to play around with. Today I sold some shares, and then noticed something odd. Although the "market value" column is correct, the "cost basis" and "gain" columns are, well, see for yourself:

James

Today crept up on me, and I didn't even realize the significance of the day until it was half over.

It has been one year since my friend died, and I still regularly dream that he is still alive, usually that he played a trick on everyone or that it was a mistake and he was OK the whole time. I don't really understand why, but that is the content of every dream that he is in.

Baby update

The baby has been squirming and kicking a lot over the past month. Her movements have been getting noticeably stronger each week, and she is now starting to cause Erinne some discomfort when she wiggles around in there.

Although the ultrasound technician said that the baby is definitely a girl, she wrote "probably girl" on the documents that she sent to our midwives. We have a lot of pink clothing that we are prepared to use, even if the baby turns out to be a boy!

Ultrasound pictures from several months ago are here.

Blog

I am going to make an effort to post here more often. I especially want to share the following:

- All things baby related
- Geeky things, especially related to emacs
- Maybe some various political things

We'll see if I can stick to it.